Names and faces
Three years ago, Alan Elliott was at the Telluride Film Festival, prepared to unveil the holy grail of musical works: A documentary on the making of Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace, which had been lost to the archives until Elliott spent decades restoring it so it could finally be seen. But when he got word that the Queen of Soul herself was trying to prevent the film from being shown. Elliott and his business partner, Tirrell Whittley, decided not to fight Franklin. “In talking to Alan, it was really around patience and saying, ‘You know what? God may not have meant it right now. And that’s OK. Let’s just be patient. When God says it’s the right time it will be the right time, not just for us but for her, for her family, for her legacy,’” Whittley said. That time has arrived, three months after Franklin’s death from pancreatic cancer, with the blessing of her family. The album Amazing Grace is one of the seminal albums in not only Franklin’s discography, but the canon of American pop music. Franklin, then 29 and at the height of her fame, recorded the album in a Los Angeles church in 1972, with a full choir and an audience that included Mick Jagger, over two nights. The film, however, was forgotten for years, but not by Elliott and Whittley. A few weeks after Franklin’s funeral, Elliott screened the film for about 60 members of her family. Soon afterward, the family agreed to the film’s release. While Amazing
Grace does not yet have a distributor, Whittley and Elliott are showing it in New York and Los Angeles to give it a push during Oscar season in hopes it could garner a nomination for best documentary.
A federal judge Friday eased release terms for would-be presidential assassin John W. Hinckley Jr., saying he has suffered no relapses since leaving a government psychiatric hospital in 2016, 35 years after he shot President Ronald Reagan and three others outside a Washington hotel. A federal jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982. With the order, Hinckley, 63, gained more freedom to explore moving out of his elderly mother’s home in Williamsburg, Va., where he has been living full-time, and will be subject to fewer required visits with his treatment team and reporting back to the court. “There have been no problems suggested in any of these reports,” said U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, who at a brief hearing Friday issued an order keeping Hinckley on full-time “convalescent leave” and allowing Hinckley to drive in up to a 75-mile-radius from Williamsburg and explore moving in with a roommate, among other changes. Friedman said a group of experts agreed Hinckley’s mental illness remains “in remission,” and continues to not pose a danger to himself or others.